Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood was a man of many talents – potter, chemist, pioneering accountant. But perhaps his most remarkable achievement was solving a problem it took another two centuries for a Nobel Prize-winning economist even to identify. That problem was how to make wealthy clients pay a premium for your goods, then add to your profits by selling them more cheaply to the mass market. Tim Harford explains how Wedgwood’s 18th century pottery was a precursor to the “trickle-down” theory of fashion that still shapes the economy today.

Producer: Ben Crighton
Editor: Richard Vadon